COLUMBIA, S.C. – Jasmine Camacho-Quinn defended her 100-meter hurdles title, while Destiny Carter scored a team-high 13 points – including taking silver in the 200m – to help the Kentucky women’s track and field team finish third at the Southeastern Conference Outdoor Championships for the third year in a row.
Kentucky’s men’s team placed 11th with 31.5 points.
The Arkansas women’s team won with 127 points, while LSU was second with 100, 19 ahead of UK. The Wildcats edged Georgia by four, Florida by five and Texas A&M by seven.
Texas A&M won the men’s team competition on 119 points.
Camacho-Quinn appeared to lead Georgia’s Kendall Williams narrowly over all 10 hurdles, and then really separated in the last 10.5 meters. She ran a time of 12.81 (+1.0), .11 better than Williams.
“I’m glad to have come out here and defended my title,” Camacho-Quinn said. “I just knew I had to stay calm throughout the race and not overthink it. It was just a pretty good race.”
Kentucky scored 15 points in the event as Camacho-Quinn tallied 10, while Jacklyn Howell added five points with a fourth-place time of 13.24.
Camacho-Quinn won the SEC 100m hurdles for the second year in a row, and gave UK the league title in that event for the fourth straight year (Kendra Harrison won in 2014 and 2015).
Camacho-Quinn has won three-straight SEC short hurdles titles, accounting for the 2016 SEC Indoor Championships with her outdoor titles the last two years. She claimed her fourth SEC medal accounting for the indoor 200m silver she claimed in February.
Destiny Carter scored eight points in the 200m with a wind-legal personal-best-tying 22.92 (+0.6) to earn her first SEC individual medal.
Earlier Saturday, Carter scored four points in the 100m with a fifth-place time of 11.25 (+1.0).
She ran the second leg of UK’s fourth-place 4x100m relay (composed of Precious Hitchcock, Carter, Kayelle Clarke and Kianna Gray), to score four points in 43.49. Carter received a point for her role on that relay.
Kiah Seymour repeated as SEC bronze medalist in the 400m hurdles battling to a third-place time of 58.06.
Katy Kunc won UK’s first SEC title in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase on Friday.
More Saturday Scorers
Marie-Josee Ebwea-Bile finished two inches shy of a triple jump medal, fourth overall, with a mark of 43’6”/13.26m to score five points.
Sarah Blake broke her javelin school record en route to a fifth-place mark of 174’3”/53.12m to score four.
UK’s women’s 4x400m relay of Sha’Keela Saunders, Hitchcock, Clarke was buoyed by a 53.04 anchor leg from Kianna Gray – while encountering some traffic on the home straight – to place fifth in 3:35.56 to score four.
Ellen Ekholm was the top freshman placer, seventh overall, in the women’s high jump having cleared 5’8.75”/1.75m to score two.
Michelle McKinney earned the first SEC point of her career, placing eighth with a mark of 4:24.56.
Men’s Saturday scorers
Jacob Thomson added four points to the six he earned with a 10k bronze from Friday by placing fifth in the 5k on Saturday. He ran 13:54.98 as he moved as far up as second with 200m to go, but was caught on the home stretch by three members of the chase pack he was a member of for much of the race.
Nikolas Huffman scored four points in the shot put with a fifth-place mark of 60’1”/18.31m. Charles Lenford Jr. tossed a PB mark of 57’9.75”/17.26m to place eighth and add a point.
UK scored seven points in the 110m hurdles with Nick Anders scoring four via a fifth-place 13.73, and Daniel Roberts scoring three with a sixth-place 13.82 (+0.2). Roberts lowered his UK freshman record.
Tim Duckworth completed a five-point meet with a sixth-place pole-vault clearance at 16’7.5”/5.07m. He scored three in the pole vault, and two in the high jump.
Ian Jones scored the first two individual points of his SEC career with a seventh-place PB 1:48.46.
The coverage
The meet will first air on television Wednesday, May 17 from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET on ESPNU.
Dwight Stones will handle play by play, Larry Rawson and Jill Montgomery will provide analysis and
SportsCenter’s John Anderson will conduct the interviews.
SECTF Strength
Kentucky’s women’s team is ranked No. 6 in this week’s U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association computer rankings – which are a forecast of team finish at the NCAA Championships, not the SEC Championships.
Three of the five women’s teams ranked ahead of the UK women are SEC squads (No. 1 Texas A&M, No. 4 LSU, No. 5 Arkansas), six of the top-10 are SEC teams, and a 11 SEC women’s team rank in the top-25.
Four of the top-five and six of the top-10 men’s teams are in the SEC. Twelve of the top-25 men’s teams in the country rank in the top 10.
UK’s SEC precedent
UK’s best SEC outdoor finish was second place in 1981, the first year the meet was held.
A year ago Kentucky placed 10th in the men’s competition with 48.50 points.
Indoor 2017: At the SEC Indoor Championships in February, the Kentucky women’s team tied the school record for team finish at the SEC Indoor Championships – third overall with 71 points.
The UK women’s program finished third at the SEC indoor meet for the first time since 1989, its only other top-three finish at indoor SECs.
The UK men’s team improved by 12 points and four spots from a year ago in placing seventh with 44 points at 2017 SEC indoors.
The SEC Championships format
Athletes earn points for their teams at the SEC Championships based on top-8 finishes on a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis.
The meet features 21 events per gender, and the team with the most points at the end wins.
On the horizon
Kentucky will welcome in effect the whole of Division I this side of the Mississippi River May 25-27 for the NCAA East Preliminary Championships. UK will play host for that event for the first time. The Wildcats were the host institution for the 2014 SEC Championships at the UK Outdoor Track.
